It is known to make a so-called assembled camshaft by precision-machining a plurality of individual cams and then fixing them on a shaft. The disks can be made by sintering and are ground to the desired shape, which typically has a circularly annular body with coaxial inner and outer peripheries and a cam lobe projecting radially from the outer periphery at one location. Thus the outer surface of the cam is mostly outwardly convex except in concave regions where the cam lobe merges with the otherwise circular outer periphery of the cam.
It is known from GB 2,193,457 to clamp a stack of such cam disks coaxially on a mandrel so that they can all be machined at the same time. This represents a substantial gain in productivity.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,566 a system is proposed for grinding such a stack of cams by first grinding all the outwardly convex surfaces using a large-diameter grinding wheel, then in a second operation with a different grinder the concave surfaces are ground with a small-diameter wheel. This produces a quality product, but the two-step grinding process increases production costs and time.
A tapered grinding disk is used in EP 0 991 497 that, with some complex control issues, is capable of producing a high-quality product. While the product is fairly good, it is necessary to use special-duty tools and grinders.